02 December 2007 5:08 PM

We are out on our last night patrol with the Royal Marines, and about to receive a bleak reminder of the risks and dangers British forces face on the ground in Afghanistan.

It is 5am and we have been on the move for almost two hours, a large force of Marines from 40 Commando and Afghan National Army soldiers advancing in silence across the moonlit plain to the north of Kajaki Dam.

We are nearing our objective, and about to cross the last piece of open ground under cover of darkness, ready to take cover and assault our target compound in Taliban territory at first light.

Without warning, the loud thump of an explosion rolls across the plain, from somewhere close by to our left.

There are whispered discussions over what the explosion may have been. Possibly the sound of artillery miles away, one Marine suggests hopefully?

His radio earpiece chatters into life, and Dozza's worst fears are confirmed. A minestrike. There are at least two casualties, one of them in Category 1 - critical.

The Incident Response Team [IRT] casualty evacuation helicopter has already been requested from Camp Bastion, some 50 miles away.

As we wait for more information the more experienced Marines are already predicting the mission will have to be aborted, or ****-canned, as they put it.

The explosion means any hope of surprise is gone. Intelligence has already indicated that the Taliban heard the blast, the commander has alerted his troops, promised them reinforcements and talked of moving rockets forward to attack the IRT helicopter if it appears.

With Charlie Company's medics busy dealing with the casualties the Officer Commanding, Major Duncan Manning, will think twice before moving more troops forward towards a prepared enemy.

Sunrise is in one hour, and by the time the casualties are on the helicopter it will be daylight, making an advance across open ground highly risky.

Sure enough, 7 Troop is ordered to collapse its perimeter and move a few hundred yards west to help the recovery operation.

A Royal Marine Commando on patrol in the early hours as seen through night vision goggles.

By 5.45am the sky is growing paler over the mountains to the east. It will soon by light enough for the Taliban to fight, and 7 troop is still dangerously exposed.

Two Army Air Corps Apache helicopter gunships are circling overhead, and behind us we can hear the distinctive heavy thud of a Chinook helicopter's rotors, arriving to evacuate the two casualties.

The IRT helicopter is on constant stand-by at Camp Bastion and carries a surgeon, anaesthetist and nurses to start treating casualties in the air.

Intelligence indicates that the Taliban have advanced to our north west, and as the sun rises we advance north up a deep wadi towards the scene of the explosion.

Over the radio we are told that the patrol's Rules of Engagement, which set out when they can open fire, have been upgraded due to the higher imminent threat.

We reach the scene.

It seems an Afghan interpreter stepped on a buried mine while standing just beside the driver's seat of an open-topped Pinzgauer truck, used as the patrol's medical vehicle.

The ground had already been searched minutes earlier with metal detectors, but for some reason the mine was not spotted. It was placed with careful thought - just at the junction of the main wadi and a narrow tributary - an obvious point for a soldier to walk.

The interpreter suffered terrible injuries, losing both legs and suffering a heart attack. The medics got his heart going again, and struggled to stabilise his condition.

The Pinzgauer is damaged and cannot move. Blood is smeared along one side.

There is deep crater by the front wheel, just three feet from where the Royal Marine driver was sitting. Astonishingly his injuries were minor.

The doctor sitting in the back was thrown across the cabin, but is not seriously hurt.

To complicate matters there is now a serious risk of more mines, and the trailer behind the Pinzgauer is full of demolition explosives, ammunition and mortar bombs.

The Marines could 'deny' the Pinzgauer - or destroy it - using their own heavy weapons or calling in an airstrike from an Apache, but the ammunition would create a massive blast, and the vehicle appears to be repairable.

Royal Marine Matt Girling, one of 7 Troop's two specialist assault engineers, volunteers to go forward with a metal detector to clear a safe path. It is his first 'live' mine clearance task. Soon he is lying on his front probing the ground ahead with a narrow spike.

'That's one lonely job,' chuckles the CSM, standing with us on the lip of the wadi a few feet above he vehicle - far too close, when we think about it, to be watching a mine clearance operation next to a large stack of ammunition.

Marine Girling probes the ground with his commando knife, looking for more I.E.D's. 'No pressure, Royal,' he yells down at Marine Girling. His quip eases the tension a notch.

Suddenly the camp's faithful dog Tangye - a stray who has adopted the Marines and accompanies them on every patrol - trots forward cheerfully to see what all the fuss is about, sniffing the ground as he wanders into the minefield.

Before anyone can stop him he is just a few feet from Marine Matt Dirling.

The CSM has stopped smiling and is screaming at the Marine: 'Stand still, mate.'

The Sergeant Major and his colleagues try desperately to turn the dog back, whistling and gesticulating. One Marine half raises his rifle towards the dog.

Tangye seems puzzled, but after a few seconds turns around and trots back 50 yards towards the nearest Land Rover.

There is a collective sigh of relief. Matt Girling returns to his work.

Troops have fanned out to form a protective screen, with snipers and heavy machine guns on slight rises around the bomb site.

Tense minutes tick by. Finally Marine Dirling reaches the crippled vehicle, sweeps with his detector around the deep blast crater and the pile of blood-stained clothing which was cut from the interpreter as the medics fought to save his life.

Marine Girling reaches the stricken Pinzgauer and sweeps the crater left by the mine explosion. Clothing left by medics as they battled to save the injured interpreter is visible.

A Land Rover prepares to tow away the recovered Pinzgauer, and its trailer full of ammunition and explosives.

A Land Rover creeps forward through the narrow cleared path, and minutes later the Pinzgauer is towed to safety.

At 7.15am we extract back down the wadi.

Gunshots ring out behind. The sniper covering our withdrawal has seen figures moving on a nearby ridge and opened fire. The Taliban are not far behind.

An hour later we are safely back in camp.

Marine Matt Girling, 22, from Norwich describes his part in the drama.

'It was an anxious moment - the first time I've done it for real - but you choose your branch and take your chance.

'There are two assault engineers in our troop, and I volunteered to go forward, rather than leave it to the other guy.

'Mind you, they didn't tell me the trailer was full of ammo and explosives. Just as well, probably.'

Matt has been a Marine for five years, and specialised as an assault engineer 18 months ago. An expert in mines, he believes the device was probably an old Soviet anti-tank weapon, planted recently by the Taliban.

'We've passed that spot several times, and cleared the route. It was definitely freshly-laid.'

Marine Matt Girling who volunteered to sweep the area surrounding the mine-strike.

Safe and well- Tangye is patted by a Marine Commando, unaware of the danger she had caused.

News comes through from Camp Bastion.

The interpreter is dead.

His name was Mohammed. Officials will not tell us more because his family risks intimidation or worse from Taliban insurgents.

Three hundred Afghans work as interpreters for UK forces.

Mohammed was the fifth to die on the frontline. Dozens more have been injured.

Major Duncan Manning, the man in charge of the patrol, says: 'Everything was going well up until the explosion. We had complete surprise.

'We don't know why the mine wasn't spotted, but people are fallible and mistakes are made.

'This wasn't a good day from a Kajaki perspective, but unfortunately that's life out here.'

It is a sobering end to our time with the Marines at Kajaki. Hours later photographer Jamie Wiseman and I are on an American Chinook helicopter hugging the mountain valleys en route to Camp Bastion, and then home.

The Royal Marines we have left behind will be back on the ground within a few hours. For them the struggle and the danger go on.

An entire generation of Afghans have known nothing but war, and now their children are growing up amid conflict.

Their average life expectancy is 35 years.

The fight for peace in Afghanistan may well take that long.

An entire generation of Afghans have known nothing but war, and now their children are growing up amid conflict.

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30 November 2007 5:06 PM

Chief Engineer Sayed Rasul has run the Kajaki Dam
hydroelectric power station since the day it opened in 1975.

In 32 years he has served under the old Afghan Republic,
the Soviet Union's occupying forces, the
Mujahadeen, the Taliban and now the British military.

Despite a dearth of spare parts and intermittent pay, he and
his 40 staff have kept the electricity flowing as the years have rolled by and
the world has gone mad around them.

Today they live Taliban-held territory, and are forced to
pass through the frontlines each morning on their way to work. Both sides let
them through, because the dam and its electricity are the key to the hearts and
minds of hundreds of thousands of Afghans.

The dam itself, originally built as part of an ambitious
irrigation scheme in the 1950s, is a vast wall of compacted earth holding back
a lake spreading for miles through the mountains.

The Taliban have hit the structure with rockets during
recent fighting - probably by accident - and barely scratched it.

The generator hall is more vulnerable, with two vast turbine
shafts and a control room where the staff sleep, work and pray.

In a country full of squalor, mud-walled homes and dust,
this clean building full of gleaming hydraulics and well-maintained machinery
is from another world.

True, the engineers have had to become experts at
improvising repairs. One turbine relies on a heat exchanger ingeniously
fashioned from an old oil drum and a garden hose. But it all works.

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Kajaki Dam, which has produced electricity since 1975
despite repeated war. Insets: The shining 'new' technology of the 1970s.

Coalition plans are well-advanced to install a third
generator and upgrade the control systems using foreign aid.

The huge turbine and 300 tonnes of concrete to house it are
waiting in storage, and Chinese engineers are on stand-by to oversee the
project.

All that is needed now is an access road from here to Kandahar which does not
run through Taliban territory. That may take some years to achieve.

Next, we have been invited for lunch with Kajaki's District
Governor Mullah Abdul Raziq, a friendly former Mujahadeen fighter with twinkly
eyes and a silky black beard, who lives in a bungalow at the gates of the
British military camp.

For the time being he is Governor in all but name of a few
square miles of war zone from which all the locals have fled, except for a
single baker, one electrician and an elderly widow.

There are no reconstruction projects for him to run, and so
far his nominal duties consist of overseeing the local Afghan National Police
detachment.

Lunch consists of some fine bread, baked by one of the
Governor's three constituents. There is also a lambs liver stew, which we eat a
little gingerly.

Through our interpreter Governor Raziq apologises that this
is only a 'snack' and not a proper feast befitting the tradition of Pashtun
hospitality.

We press him for stories of his days fighting with the
Mujahadeen against the Soviet invaders in the 1980s.

He is a little coy, but talks thoughtfully about the reasons
the Russians were defeated here - a combination of Western funding and weaponry
supplied to the Mujahadeen and the Russians' failure to win the support of
local people, thinking wrongly that military victories would be enough.

The Governor believes the British are not making the same
mistake, and says he admires their 'hearts and minds' strategy. His script
could have been written in Whitehall.

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Daily Mail reporter Matthew Hickley dines with Kajaki's
District Commissioner Mullah Abdul Raziq (right), tucking into bread made by
one of his three remaining constituents.

Later we visit a building known locally as 'The Russians'
Last Stand'. The grim story attached to it may explain Mullah Abdul Raziq's
reluctance to discuss his exploits.

A massacre took place here, when a detachment of young
Soviet conscript soldiers were cut off and left behind during the retreat.

Surrounded by Mujahadeen fighters, they withstood wave after
wave of attacks, until their ammunition ran out.

The Mujahadeen stormed the ground floor and tortured and
butchered the soldiers they found there. The young Russians are said to have
been flayed alive.

Those upstairs fought on, listening to the screams of their
friends dying downstairs.

The walls of the dark stairwell are scarred with dozens of
bullet holes, from the last desperate minutes of fighting. None of the Russians
survived.

The atmosphere is oppressive. The shattered building has
never been re-used, and it lies just outside the British perimeter. We are glad
to leave.

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The Russian House, outside the British Kajaki Dam Base,
where young Russian conscripts made their last stand against the
Mujahadeen. None survived the onslaught.

We are heading for the Royal Marines' observation posts on
the peaks behind the camp, which offer a commanding view for miles, covering
all the ground on which fighting is taking place.

The route lies several hundred feet up a steep goat track,
and we arrive half an hour later panting for breath. The Marines race up
carrying full kit, the current record is 17 minutes.

Up here the Marines live for weeks at a time in crude dug
outs reminiscent of the First World War trenches, with precious few home
comforts. All their requirements have to be carried up, including water - and
the all important ammunition.

The first rains of winter arrived two days ago, and the
Marines are busy making their 'grots' or sleeping areas more waterproof.

Living in bunkers akin to First World War conditions, 22 year old Marine Tony Cross from Taunton re-reads a 'bluey' (a letter from home) in his 'grots'- sandbag living accommodation built on top of 'The Peaks', the Commando mountain outpost .
pictured looking towards the Northern 'FLET' or frontline.

Much of their time is spent manning powerful telescopes, and
firing .50 calibre heavy machine guns and javelin guided missiles in support of
their comrades on the ground.

In the distance they point out to us the target compounds we
are due to visit during a fighting patrol in the early hours of the next
morning.

We clamber back down the steep slopes to Kajaki camp. It is
more comfortable than most of the British military Forward Operating Bases in Helmand and helps protect
the Marine Commando Base below from Taliban advances.

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The Daily Mail's Matthew Hickley scales 'The Peaks', a mountain top Commando outpost which overlooks the Helmand River Valley and helps protect the Marine Commando Base below from Taliban advances. The Commando recod for ascent with full equipment is 17 minutes.

Built for the dam construction workers half a century ago,
it boasts neat bungalows, electrical power, limited running water and an
eye-wateringly beautiful view, most of which is of land held by the Taliban.

Two local dogs have been adopted by forces, one named Tangye and the other Charlie, named after Charlie Company 40

The dogs accompany the Marines on all their patrols, even at
night, and often pop in to visit the detachment living on the distant peaks.

They eat extremely well, with many of the Marines grumbling
that their mothers, wives and girlfriends send more parcels containing luxury
dog food than anything else.

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Royal Marine Commandos on patrol with the help of Charlie
(front) and Tangye (background)', the camp dogs, who have started receiving
more luxurious welfare parcels than some of the troops.

Arriving back at the camp we face a serious problem. We
failed to bring with us any mugs for drinking tea - or 'a wet', as the Marines
call it - and the base has run out of the usual disposable cups.

The ever-helpful Nepalese soldiers from the Queen's Gurkha
Engineers come to our rescue, lending us a saw and showing us how to carve the
bottom of a hardened plastic case for an 81mm mortar shell into a serviceable
mug, about the size of a pint glass.

Panic over. Time to put the kettle on - and prepare for the
next night patrol.

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29 November 2007 3:58 PM

Through the abandoned, silent town where weeds grow in the street and doors hang off their hinges, there is no talking.

The patrol trudges on in double file, spaced on either side of the road, out onto the deserted plain that is no-man's land.

It is 2.30am, and the moonlight is so bright there is no need for night vision goggles.

We can see dozens of men stretching in front and behind, and the high peaks across the Helmand River from where more Marines in the observation posts are watching.

The men of Charlie Company, 40 Commando are heading out on a recce patrol across the plains below the Kajaki dam, in northern Helmand, which is their task to protect.

They are moving towards the Taliban's frontline some three miles away - looking for weaknesses, 'break-in' points and evacuation routes, learning the ground for future battles and, if necessary, fighting one tonight.

This no-man's land is an undulating plain of rock and sand, with occasional ridges, dried up wadis [water courses] and dotted with abandoned farm compounds.

The Taliban rarely fight at night, and our aim is to recce our targets and slip away by first light, unless the Taliban spot us and attack.

After an hour we pause and 'go firm', taking cover against a compound wall. A few whispered conversations. Muted chatter from radio headphones.The temperature is dropping.

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Troops from 'C' Company, 40 Commando "go firm", using the mud walls of a compound to take cover from possible enemy fire, pictured in the early hours en route to Taliban held territory. The photograph was taken by moonlight on a long exposure.

The Fire Support Group - heavy weapons teams in Land Rovers - have already crept forward onto high ground, scanning their 'arcs' with night vision sights.

We move on again, gaining height, with frequent stops to scan with metal detectors, searching for booby-trap bombs.

We stop at a small isolated mud-walled hut. 7 Troop's Sergeant Dominic 'Dozza' Conway goes to see if he can safely enjoy a swift cigarette inside.

Instead he stumbles across the entrance to a tunnel system, with rough steps disappearing 20 feet down into the ground.

The whole area is crisscrossed with tunnels, trenches and rat runs, enabling the Taliban to pop up unexpectedly and launch flanking attacks.

Dozza notes the location with his hand-held GPS, but there is no time to explore fully.

It is now 4am, and we are 400 yards short of the Taliban frontline, with some two hours of darkness left.

Ahead of us occasional flashes light up the sky. Distant airstrikes? Artillery? We lie on a low ridge, scanning the ground in front. Soon we realise it is an electrical storm.

This complicates matters. If it reaches our position the patrol's radio aerials could put them in danger of a lighting strike.

We move on and shortly before 5am we creep up the slope to our target compound, which is silhouetted against the night sky. This is the furthest the Marines have advanced to date, and we are in Taliban territory.

Slipping through a rubble-filled gap caused by an airstrike, and the Marines quickly fan out to clear the compound, then through the warren of mud walls into the next abandoned enclosure.

Only later do we learn that at this point we were in the next-door compound to the forward Taliban sentry, with only a mud wall dividing us.

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Troops inside an abandoned compound in no-man's land.

Our troop commander Captain Russell Fleet is muttering into his radio headset, giving our position and asking permission to move forward once more.

We are told to wait. Troops to the rear are preparing the Desert Hawk, a small satellite-guided spy drone launched using a large elastic bungee which flies a few hundred feet up, watching the battlefield below.

The radio crackles. The UAV launch has encountered a problem on take-off - when it hit the operator on the head and crashed. The satellite-link has failed.

Without UAV cover and with the electrical storm closing in, Company Commander Major Duncan Manning has decided not to risk a further advance, and our troop is ordered to extract - little knowing how close we are to confronting a Taliban sentry post.

Dozza observes: 'The lads are just itching to get at the enemy, but we have to look at the bigger picture.

'We will come back here and get them, but for now we've achieved the mission. We've recced routes in and out of here.

'The OC [officer commanding] doesn't want us in the open at first light.'

The wind is rising as we descend the slope, kicking up the dust and bringing a biting cold. The first spots of rain of winter are falling.

Five minutes later, the storm is screaming. The dust has all-but blotted out the moonlight and visibility is dropping fast. The sky is growing paler, but the Taliban will struggle to see us now.

We trudge on through the cold half-light and rejoin the Fire Support Group, then seek shelter from he rain in another cluster of abandoned compounds.

Our next task is to provide protection for the local Afghan National Police who are passing this way en route to buy provisions. They are procrastinating over the radio as to what time they will be meeting their supplier. 9am? 10? 11?

Maj Manning is not prepared to leave his troops doing nothing so close to the enemy for four hours just because the ANP cannot decide what time to go shopping. He orders a withdrawal.

We start the long trudge back to camp. Intelligence indicates that Taliban are now aware of our presence and are planning an out-flanking attack, believing the clouds will keep aircraft away.

As we withdraw an American F-15 strike jet arrives to make a show of strength, dropping out of the clouds to scream over the Taliban behind us, firing off flares.

By 9am we are back in camp. The local Police, emboldened by the coalition warplanes roaring overhead, have now decided to go shopping without the Marines' protection.

It is a bad decision.

The Taliban have had plenty of time to watch the Marines' withdrawal, and have followed at a distance.

Within minutes the still morning is shattered by small arms fire. 'There go the ANP shooting off. It'll be a load of fuss about nothing,' commentsCompany Sergeant Major Dave Layton.

The firing grows more intense. The thudding explosion from a rocket propelled grenade echoes around the hills.

'Hmmm. Maybe not, then,' says the CSM, listening thoughtfully.

Another RPG explodes, and another. More machine gun fire follows. The police patrol's shopping trip has turned into a pitched battle, just at the spot where the Marines Fire Support Group vehicles were parked earlier.

The same FSG teams are now running to their vehicles and hurrying out of the camp to the rescue.

Back in camp, 40 Commando's Mortar Troop are dashing though the rain to their posts and their controller, 38-year-old Sgt Simon 'Smudge' Smith, from Plymouth, is yelling orders.

The mortar line routine is slick. Within seconds each team has the right ammunition stacked ready for use and are aiming their mortar tubes.

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A shell visible through the 'dragons breath'- flames at the end of a mortar tube- as Mortar Troops attached 'C' Company, 40 Commando fire smoke shells to help the ANP escape Taliban fire after their shopping trip turned nasty.

Smudge yells out bearing, elevations and charge strengths from a small hand-held computer which processes target coordinates.

On his command, shells are dropped neatly into the barrels and the thumping explosions rock the mortar positions. Above us the projectiles can just be glimpsed in a blur - disappearing into the clouds.

The seconds tick by as the shells fly thousands of feet into air, and the teams wait for target corrections over the radio net.

Mortar firing continues for 10 minutes, putting down a smoke barrage for the ANP and Marines to withdraw to safety.

From the battlefield the firing subsides. And Smudge orders the teams to 'check firing.'

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An RAF Harrier swoops low over the Tangye Bridge, in a show of force in support of 40 Commando troops facing Taliban forces.

An RAF Harrier jump jet arrives to add a further show of force, roaring 100ft above the river in front of the camp.

The Taliban have had enough.
News comes through that the ANP have all reached the camp without casualties.

They were lucky this time. Whether they will get up earlier to go shopping next time is another matter.

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28 November 2007 1:10 PM

To fix a small hole in the road at Kajaki, Afghanistan, requires several scores of heavily-armed Royal Marines and Gurkhas including snipers, combat engineers, medics and mortar teams.

The hole in question happens to be in no-man's land, just a few hundred yards short of the nearest Taliban firing position.

The Marines of Charlie Company, 40 Commando, have a luxury which is unusual for British forces in Afghanistan. They know where the enemy is.

Tasked with protecting the strategically-vital Kajaki dam, which provides electricity and irrigation water for most of Helmand Province, the Marines control - in a loose sense - a bubble of territory extending some two to three miles around the dam itself.

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On patrol: Royal Marine Commandos south of their base at Kajaki Dam in Helmand Province, Southern Afghanistan.

From their compound The Marines can clearly see the 'FLET' - Forward Line of Enemy Troops - marked by a line of sun-baked compounds in the middle distance, held by Taliban fighters.

Virtually all the local civilians have fled, so that instead of patrolling through busy towns and villages where every local is a potential Taliban gunman, Charlie Company are able to fight a more conventional battle.

It is the only place in Afghanistan where the term 'FLET' is used.

The two sides in the fight for Kajaki have reached a strange deadlock.

The Royal Marines lack the manpower or firepower to push the Taliban further back, and are content for now to safeguard the dam itself, launching frequent fighting patrols to stop enemy encroachment.

For their part the Taliban lack the strength to storm the British positions - which are backed by a ridge of high hills from where the Marines have a commanding view of the entire area - and seem satisfied with containing the UK forces, lobbing occasional mortar shells and rockets at the British base, and fighting viciously when the Marines approach.

Nor do the insurgents want to destroy the huge Kajaki Dam or disrupt its electricity supply, which would enrage the ordinary Afghans whose support the Taliban need.

Bizarrely the militants even allow the local power station workers to pass unhindered through their own frontline each morning on their way to work at the dam, carrying a special pass, and to return each night to their homes in Taliban-held territory.

It is a unique situation, as the Taliban are notorious for intimidating or killing locals who cooperate with coalition forces.

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The Marines protect Kajaki dam, which provides electricity and irrigation water for most of Helmand Province

We joined the men of Charlie Company on a morning patrol into the southern 'FLET' area, tasked with protecting the Gurkha Engineers as they repair a stretch of road, then sweeping through a previously-unvisited area of mud-walled compounds.

"The (heavy weapons teams) on our vehicles or the snipers can see them better, and talk us onto the targets, but it's often just a window or a hole in a compound wall the Taliban are firing from.

"They tend not to attack unless we approach within a certain distance. So it either all goes kinetic [a firefight] or we have a kind of Mexican stand-off."

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The Marines mix with local farmers

Our patrol moves into no-man's land - an area of fields, irrigation ditches and compounds flanking the Helmand River.

We meet a handful of local farmers who have fled their homes because of the fighting, but are so desperate to scratch a living that they occasionally return to their fields to hurriedly tend their crops, sometimes by torch-light at night, watched suspiciously by both the Taliban and the Royal Marines.

Through the interpreters the farmers ask the British troops, should we leave the area? Are you going to fight? Will you warn us?

A Marine tells them they are welcome to stay.

We will not fight today unless the Taliban open fire but we cannot guarantee the farmers' safety.

The nervous farmers eventually decide their crops are not worth the risk today, and they make to leave.

These Afghans live their lives quite literally in the cross-fire.

The Marines are encouraged that they are here at all, as the locals appear to feel at least a little safer than in previous months.

"We have to try to make them feel safe enough to farm," Dozza observes.

"It's no good us just killing the bad guys. These locals have got to farm or they'll starve to death. There's no Tesco on the corner, like."

For the British troops the main danger here is from hidden booby-trap bombs.

The Taliban creep out and bury crude pressure-plate devices connected to old artillery shells or other explosives. They are deadly when they work, and finding them requires patience and skill with metal detectors.

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Searches of the farm land is carried out in order to find hidden booby-trap bombs

The Marines move on as the heat grows more intense, systematically clearing and searching a warren of abandoned farmers' compounds, moving steadily closer to the Taliban lines.

A few more farmers appear, along with a handful of children - smiling and curious as always.

Each section of troops carries a lightweight assault ladder to gain access to roofs, and stretchers in case of casualties.

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26 November 2007 5:33 PM

Thursday is Shura day at the British military base in Sangin, northern Helmand Province.It is not to be confused with compensation claim day, which is Tuesday. But more of that later.

In Afghanistan a Shura is a traditional gathering of elders to discuss weighty matters.

Every Thursday Governor Hazitullah, the man appointed to represent President Karzai's government here in Sangin, invites the local elders into his official residence - a building refurbished by the British, within the walls of their fortified compound on the edge of town.

If he lived outside the walls, he would be lucky to survive long with the Taliban still lurking in Sangin.

For Major Dan Cheesman, officer commanding Bravo Company 40 Commando, Royal Marines, the weekly Shura is a chance to urge support from the locals, to offer a vision for Sangin's future and to drop a few hints to keep the Taliban guessing about his next move.

At 10am some two dozen elders file into the whitewashed and pillared meeting room, remove their shoes and take their places seated on the rugs covering the floor.

At one end Maj Cheesman is joined by the Governor, the local police chief, the Afghan National Army (ANA) colonel commanding Sangin's 'kandak', or battalion - an imposing bearded soldier from the north of Afghanistan - and the ever-present interpreters.

First come the speeches. The Governor, a rotund and cheerful former Mujahadeen commander who fought against the Russians, is master of ceremonies, and tells the elders when to clap.

He speaks first, expounding the merits of education (he himself is illiterate) and urging them to send their children to the new primary school nearing completion just outside the compound gates, where British heavy machine guns can protect it.

The police chief speaks out against fraudulent compensation claims from the British. Pausing to silence his mobile phone's elaborate ring-tone, he claims such frauds are 'un-Islamic', even when perpetrated against British infidels.

The Afghan colonel calls for the elders' support. The British are only here to create security and to help, he says. The roads and buildings they are creating cannot be taken back to Britain - they are purely for the people of Sangin.

The Taliban have nothing to offer but violence, he says. They wage jihad against their fellow-Muslims in the town.

It is a persuasive message, but his audience is cautious.

In this war-torn region local Afghans have always survived the endless conflicts by backing the likely winners, and for now things remain in the balance.

The elders clap politely but their faces are inscrutable.

A handful of the 'elders' here today are almost certainly Talib fighters, memorising faces and gathering intelligence. The risk is judged to be worth taking. Everyone is searched at the compound gates.

There is one moment of fear, however.

An Afghan police officer is distributing glasses of sweet tea, his AK-47 rifle slung backwards from his shoulder - the barrel waving around the room.

A British Army officer surreptitiously reaches up and flicks the assault rifle's safety catch to 'on'. He catches my eye and grimaces.

It is not uncommon for Afghan police to have negligent discharges, shooting themselves in the foot, or worse.

Maj Cheesman rises to speak. It has been another busy week, he says, and the Taliban are still too scared to fight the British.

'It is our number one priority to hunt these people down', he says. 'We have hundreds of Marines and many, many tanks. We will kill them if they come.'

It is a simple message. We have a big stick and will hit the Taliban.

The carrot next - promises of improvements in the so-far unimpressive local police force. A radio station for the Governor on which the elders can speak to local people, if they like.

He saves his best carrot for last - the British have £1million, a vast sum of money in local terms, to spend on reconstruction projects in the next three months. Local workers will be hired to build amenities, with good wages for good quality work.

'If you do not involve yourselves in these projects the money will not come to your part of Sangin, and it will go back to Britain.'

The speeches are over, and it is the turn of the elders.

Suddenly all the talk of community reconstruction and a bright future is brought face to face with reality.

Every single elder crowds around the nearest British officer demanding to know what is happening with his own individual compensation claim - for houses or vehicles damaged in recent fighting, or for relatives killed.

No, the British officers insist patiently. Tuesday is compensation day. Today is Thursday - the day for talking about reconstruction.

Nobody hears. The tide of self-interest and greed flows through the room, sweeping all before it.

Captain Charlie Macdonald is the officer tasked with spreading the coalition message to the people of Sangin.

'It is very difficult,' he says. 'It is almost as if we have to teach these people what to aspire to. They've known nothing but war for 30 years, and simply don't have any vision of working schools or clinics or rubbish collection.

'It's a gap in their vocabulary. All they care about right now is me, me, me.

'Of course it's understandable. It will take years of small steps.'

None of the elders have any suggestions for reconstruction projects. They wave documentary 'evidence' supporting their claims, some of which are ludicrous. One man insists he had nine vehicles destroyed by British bombs. Nobody in Sangin has nine vehicles.

Tempers flare. British officers have to become increasingly firm.

Finally everybody has had their say, and the elders drift away for the lunch laid on for them.We retire with the senior Afghan and British players to the Governor's dining room - a smaller room with a fine carpet and cushions against the walls, where plates of raisins and cans of Orangina await us.

A goat arrived outside a few minutes earlier, bleating unhappily in the clutches of a motorbike passenger. Lunch may be a while yet.

The talk is of politics - local, national and international.

The ANA Colonel speaks out angrily against Pakistan, whose interference and unofficial support for the Taliban he blames for most of Afghanistan's ills.

Maj Cheesman, an officer with long experience of Afghan politics, gently probes the Governor, testing his willingness to confront the hundred-and-one intractable problems in his town.

Today there is progress. When I ask Governor Hazitullah about his work he is eager to take credit for everything good which is happening. 'I have built the new police accommodation. I am building the primary school.'

The British officers, eager to put an 'Afghan face' on all their work here, are encouraged to hear him finally taking 'ownership' of these projects.

If UK forces are ever to leave Sangin, the Governor and all his officials will have to stand alone.

For now that remains a distant prospect.

Lunch arrives and a plastic sheet is spread out, covered with briefcase-sized slabs of naan bread, plates of rice, fish (mostly inedible) and a meat curry.

The British are careful to observe the niceties. We sit cross-legged to avoid showing the soles of our feet to our hosts. All food is eaten right-handed.

Finally the meeting draws to a close, with many handshakes and smiles. The Governor embraces me and calls me 'brother' - a very great compliment.

In the struggle to build a stable, secure society here, both the British and Afghans are still in the foothills.

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23 November 2007 5:54 PM

British soldiers under attack in southern Afghanistan fire mortar shells to repel a Taliban night assault.

The deafening explosions light up the night, and illumination flares float down from the sky to help troops manning the heavy machine guns on the rooftops to break up the attack, killing or driving away the insurgents.

Close up: An intense pounding sound from the mortars can be heard all night at the camp

UK forces in Sangin, northern Helmand Province, are working to dominate the area and win over the hearts and minds of locals, but the Taliban insurgents have not retreated.

Fortified camps around the town are under frequent attack, as the enemy try to drive out the British and Afghan National Army forces and to show the locals that the Taliban remains a force to be reckoned with.

In this incident on Thursday night the militants crept up on the British compound and fired rocket-propelled grenades, then opened up with machine guns.

Men from Mortar Platoon, the 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards, scrambled into action as orders came through on the radio, relaying target coordinates for the enemy positions.

Here Guardsman Matthew Parkin, 19, and Guardsman Martyn Jones, 20, normally based in Windsor, are seen firing shells from their 81mm heavy mortar.

Sangin was the scene of intense fighting last summer and earlier this year, as UK forces withstood weeks of assaults from Taliban fighters trying to overrun this base.

The town has traditionally been a major centre for the flourishing opium trade, was a Taliban stronghold until UK forces arrived last year.

Now two other bases a few miles outside the town are acting as a buffer for Sangin itself by absorbing most of the daily attacks, and the enemy seldom assaults the town itself in daylight, preferring to plant roadside bombs or to pound the military compounds with heavy weapons at night.

A few locals have moved back into the town - largely abandoned during the recent fighting - and security is just about sufficient for the first efforts at reconstruction to begin.

But as these images show, the battle for Sangin - where Royal Marines from Bravo Company, 40 Commando are trying to bring stability - is far from over, with the Taliban biding their time and striking whenever they can.

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22 November 2007 7:00 PM

The sun was not yet up as the rumbling armoured column surrounded the town, and the Royal Marines leapt from their vehicles and took up positions ready for their assault.

The remote desert settlement of Malmand, untouched so far by the Afghan conflict, was about to receive its first visit from coalition forces fighting the Taliban in Helmand Province.

Three hundred and fifty men had travelled through the night across the desert, and within minutes the high ground around the town - identified as a haven and supply post for senior Taliban commanders - was bristling with allied heavy machine-guns and mortar teams.

With so much firepower supporting them, most of the Marines were hopeful that things would 'kick off.'

After weeks of detailed planning, a combined force of Royal Marines, American Special Forces and Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers were here to capture or kill the Taliban leaders and demonstrate their ability to dominate this area.

As Operation Ghartse Amazon began we joined the Marines of 4 Troop, Bravo Company 40 Commando, as they took up defensive positions on the edge of the settlement and then advanced swiftly to their first target.

Malmand town, a Biblical scene of mud-walled compounds and small fields, had been photographed from the air and painstakingly mapped with scores of compounds given separate codenames each assigned to a particular unit to minimise the risk of friendly fire in a complex, multinational operation.

Ahead, we could already see figures fleeing from compounds, jumping down from the high walls and vanishing into the twilight. Reaching our first target compound, the troops took up all-round defensive positions and swept into a squalid, filthy courtyard, the Afghan soldiersentering first.

A group of women and young children cowered in a corner, the women hidingtheir faces from the strangers.

The owner gave his name as Mohammed. No, there were no Taliban here, hesaid. Yes, they sometimes came to the village.

Every room was searched, every pile or rubbish and straw kicked over. Butno weapons were found.

At the next compound the Marines uncovered a shotgun with cartridges, butaccepted the owner's story that they were for self-defence. He claimed tobe a teacher and insisted he hated the Taliban - who for years haveintimidated and murdered schoolteachers.

Bizarrely, the Gurkha Commando engineers attached to our patrol, experts in'explosive entry' or blowing holes in the mud-brick walls, are able to chat to the locals in Hindi. Many Afghans have apparently learned the Indian language from watching Bollywood movies.

The priority targets dealt with, the Marines withdrew to a small hill while ANA soldiers conducted their own search nearby, accompanied by British Army mentors.

UK troops remain nervous of the ANA's questionable weapons-handling skills, and their eagerness to loose off a few rounds.

The Marines shook their heads and muttered as repeated warning shots rang out from the compounds where the Afghan soldiers are searching.

At this point intelligence sources suggested the Taliban claimed that they could see us on the hill and were about to open fire with rocket-propelled grenades.

A big ambush was prepared in the centre of town, and they would kill us all.

On the face of it this seemed alarming news, but the Marines were unimpressed.

"They're always boasting that we're surrounded and they're about to attack. Maybe it's to impress their bosses, or see how we react.

"It would be suicidal to take us on here. We've got the town surrounded with heavy weapons, and hundreds of men on the ground.

"I doubt any of them would get away, and we wouldn't be particularly merciful. They know we probably won't open fire unless we see them with weapons, so they cache their weapons and hide.

"They also don't want to be blamed for civilian casualties. They need hearts and minds as much as we do."

We moved on through more compounds, every one containing a large stack of dried poppies, left over from the recent harvest.

The fields have already been sown with the next crop.

Opium production is growing fast in Helmand - probably the world's most productive area, accounting for most of the heroin which reaches Britain'sstreets.

Eradicating the poppies is outside the remit of British forces, and the Afghan government is doing nothing in this area. Farmers make five times more profit from opium than from wheat, and no realistic alternative is on offer.

Among all the talk of reconstruction, heroin is the 'elephant in the room', as one British officer put it.

All the land in Malmand is thought to be owned by one 'narco-chief', who rents the land out to farmers to grow his poppies for him.

The searches dragged on as the day grew hotter. A few weapons were found and confiscated, more farmers questioned. More piles of poppies found and ignored.

But no ambush came, no RPG attacks.

A French Mirage jet roared low over the town - a sudden crack of thunder above the rooftops. Two slower American A-10 jets followed, firing off flares as they climbed into the distance. The Taliban have learned to respect and fear allied airpower.

Finally after almost seven hours on the ground we reached our pick-up point and the weary Marines clambered gratefully into Viking armoured vehicles for the long, cramped and uncomfortable four-hour journey back to base.

Reaching Sangin, the danger was not over.

The Taliban knew that the British forces must return along a particular route - now an obvious route for an IED attack.

The tired troops disembarked and formed up into tactical patrols, flankingand surrounding the danger spot in depth. Any waiting attacker now facedalmost certain capture or death, and no attack comes.

For the fighting Marines this was a day of frustration and anti-climax - an increasingly common pattern, at least in this area, where the Taliban appear increasingly unwilling to attack in open battle.

But Major Dan Cheesman, officer commanding Bravo Company 40 Commando and the man in charge of today's operation, was not discouraged.

"The Taliban were there," he said, speaking back at base in Sangin, 20 miles away.

"We now believe they were hiding in a mosque with 30 fighters, and we didn't search the mosque.

"Even if they'd had 100 fighters they'd have been mad to take us on. We appeared at dawn and encircled them with armour in what amounted to a battle group operation.

"We swept through the town. We were seen to be respectful and polite. We didn't outstay our welcome.

"Am I disappointed the Taliban didn't fight? No. This is a counter-insurgency campaign. A long game.

"They know we can come back whenever we want. Malmand is no longer safe forthem."

The Sangin District Centre, as the fortified compound is called, is based around the former home of a
wealthy drugs baron, now thought to have fled to Musa Qala.

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The boys of Bravo Company, 40 Commando, relax in thier headquarters in Sangin Camp, which was the former home of a wealthy drugs baron

The three-storey building which acts as HQ to Bravo Company, 40 Commando, features elaborately decorated ceilings with tiled and mirrored mosaics - clearly funded by highly profitable opium crops, in a town where most people live in mud-walled compounds.

There is even a swimming pool, currently drained and being lived in by the explosives disposal team.
There are plans to fill it with water - probably once they have moved out.

From time to time a man claiming to be the owner's brother arrives and demands rent from the British,
but the District Governor has declared the house to be Afghan Government property, on loan to UK forces, and the man is given short thrift.

Most of the Marines make themselves as comfortable as they can in single-storey mud huts, sleeping on
camp beds surrounded by stacks of weapons, ammunition, radios, night vision goggles and batteries, body armour and water bottles.

Everything is permanently covered in fine dust.

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Dinner is served: The Marines are served two hot meals a day. Breakfast (pictured), like the rest of the food is wholesome but monotonous

The diet is wholesome but monotonous, with breakfast and dinner cooked in a tented galley and eaten from disposable plates, cups and cutlery.

Breakfast consists of porridge, scrambled egg and a concoction of baked beans and sausages.

Lunchtime brings a limited choice of rehydrated packet noodles, rice and pasta, with slabs of chocolate
and dried fruit.

The chefs' repertoire at dinner is limited to stew and mashed potato, spaghetti Bolognese, curry or
chilli and rice, followed by tinned fruit and custard. Food may not be varied, but nor is it in short supply.

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The troops guard Sangin base against attack from the Taliban 24 hours a day

The toilets, or 'heads', are pipes draining into an irrigation canal, or 'long drop' seats.

Solar showers are used - bags of water left to warm in the sun during the day and then hung on a peg.
Others prefer to swim and wash in the canal which runs through the camp.

The rule is that helmets and body armour are never more than a few seconds away.

Generators provide electricity most of the time, powering a television and two laptops for the Marines to email friends and family back home.

Up on the roof of the two tall buildings within the compound fortified 'sangars' are manned around the clock watching every approach to the camp.

At times they have been kept busy repelling attacks by the Taliban. Recent days have been quieter, but there is no let-up in watchfulness.

The medical post in the HQ building is frequently used to treat badly injured locals. Some arrive with
stab or gunshot wounds from family disputes which get out of hand.

We watched a three-year-old Afghan boy being treated for severe burns, suffered when scalding milk was spilled over his back.

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Medics treat a three-year-old Afghan boy who was badly burnt by scalding milk

The medics' remit is to treat trauma cases among locals whenever possible as part of the 'hearts and
minds' effort, but not long-term conditions where the patient would become dependent on military help.

Among the Royal Marines the mood is upbeat. They are in the second month of a six-month tour of duty, and so far they feel they have been successful in taking the fight to the enemy, patrolling with enough men and firepower to discourage the Taliban from taking them on.

Direct attacks on the Sangin camp have tailed off, as new British operating bases to the north and the south are bearing the brunt of the Taliban's frequent assaults, shielding Sangin town itself and allowing just enough security for reconstruction efforts to begin - albeit in a small way so far.

The Taliban are still here in Sangin, and the loyalty of locals is in the balance, but commanders are optimistic.

The Marines look forward to their next scrap with the enemy, and 'getting some rounds down.'

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18 November 2007 7:00 PM

The helicopter hugs the contours of the mountain valley, twisting and climbing steeply between the towering cliffs.

Inside the noise is deafening - the thud of the twin rotors competing with the screaming of the engines, while the wind rips through the crowded rear cabin, coating everything with dust and the hot smell of aviation fuel.

A dozen Royal Marines are strapped in on the cramped bench seats, with piles of rucksacks and supplies filling every available inch of space.

The RAF's fleet of Chinook helicopters is working around the clock ferrying men and supplies to the outlying fighting bases up and down the Helmand River valley, which means landing in the most hazardous areas of the Province.

First stop this morning is Kajaki Dam - the northernmost outpost of Britain's military effort - upon which hangs the coalition's hopes for the long-term development of Helmand, and of some form of victory here in the years ahead.

The Dam provides electricity and irrigation water for tens of thousands of Afghans downstream, where UK forces are locked in a battle to win their hearts and minds.

The ambitious plan is to install more turbines in the dam to boost capacity, and with it the region's economy - a vital step in persuading the locals that life without the Taliban offers a brighter future.

But before that, the area must somehow be made safe. For now the long road to Kajaki, up which engineers and huge pieces of machinery will one day have to pass, runs through a warzone.

And at the dam itself the ground held by Marines of Charlie Company, 40 Commando British only extends two or three miles to the north or south. Beyond that the Taliban lie in wait, occasionally firing mortar shells towards the dam and the turbine hall.

Each time British troops mount fighting patrols to push the enemy back, they spark a battle, and each time they return to their base, the Taliban creep forward.

Daily Mail journalist Matthew Hickley arrives at Sangin Camp in a Chinook helicopter, in the Helmand Province of Southern Afghanistan, to start patrols with British Soldiers

The Marines control the high ground and have superior firepower, but for the time being neither side has the strength to drive the other off, and for the British this is a holding action - keeping the Taliban at bay just sufficiently to keep the dam out of accurate mortar range.

Our Chinook races through a rocky valley system in Taliban-held territory and drops towards the lake, skimming across the dazzling blue water to touch down on a dusty track in the narrow gorge just below the dam, kicking up a dust-storm which engulfs the party of Marines waiting for the Chinook's arrival.

We are on the ground for only a few seconds. The Marines hurry aboard to grab the boxes of supplies and two treasured bags of post and parcels from home.

Then we are airborne and climbing fast, spiralling away out of small-arms fire range.

Our destination today is the town of Sangin, 25 miles downstream from Kajaki.

A Gurkha at Sangin Camp goes fishing in a nearby canal

Last summer soldiers from the Parachute Regiment spent weeks under siege in this small fortified compound on the edge of town, beating back wave after wave of attacks as the Taliban tried to overrun the camp, using the maze of mud-walled homes outside the gate and the so-called Green Zone of vegetation along the river as cover.

The Sangin fortress - centred around the impressive former mansion of an Afghan drugs baron - is scarred and battered by countless bullets and rocket-grenades, but remains firmly in British hands.

Today it is home to Bravo Company of 40 Commando. They still face firefights and roadside bombs in the town on their doorstep, although much of the fighting has shifted four kilometres to the north where troops have established a new Forward Operating Base.

The Marines there, from Alpha Company, are under daily attack with machine guns, mortars and rockets. It is progress of a kind, as the Taliban have been pushed back a little, and in Sangin there are the first signs of normality returning - or what passes for normality in Helmand Province.

Locals have started to move back into the abandoned town.

As we arrive, news comes over the radio of another 'TIC' or Troops In Contact - a firefight - nearby at the new base. We watch from the rooftop hangar as an allied jet is called in to launch an airstrike on a Taliban firing position, and a 500lb bomb sends a mushroom cloud of dust and smoke hundreds of feet into the sky.

More warplanes circle high above, and a British Harrier jump jet screams low over Sangin, heading towards the battle nearby.

By sunset the fighting on the horizon has tailed off. At Sangin the Marines are resting, preparing for their next patrol. After the heat of the day they bathe and wash in the fast-flowing irrigation canal which bisects the compound.

Home comforts: Between patrols the Marines take time out to bathe and wash their laundry in the irrigation canal which bisects the Sangin compound.

Seasoned experts at improvising home comforts, some have rigged up on old stove in their makeshift accommodation to bake fresh bread.

The Queen's Gurkha Engineers detachment prefer fishing in the canal carrying their famous Kukri knives to prepare their catch for the cooking pot.

Up in the rooftop watchtowers, in the gathering darkness, Marines scour the approaches to the camp with night-vision equipment, and the heavy weapon positions and piles of ammunition stand ready.

There is time for the Padre of 40 Commando, who arrived on the same helicopter flight, to hold a short prayer meeting. A few Marines gather in a quiet corner and the Padre hands around copies of the 'Commando Prayer Book', which they read by the light of their head torches. The cover shows a Cross above the black Commando dagger - the badge which every Marine wears proudly on his arm.

The night is punctuated by occasional small-arms fire and flares sent up from the watchtowers, illuminating possible hostile contacts.

Tomorrow brings more patrols out into the town - more risks of attack from the Taliban, more efforts to rebuild and to gain the trust of the ordinary Afghans who live out their lives against the backdrop of this war.

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02 December 2007

We are out on our last night patrol with the Royal Marines, and about to receive a bleak reminder of the risks and dangers British forces face on the ground in Afghanistan.

It is 5am and we have been on the move for almost two hours, a large force of Marines from 40 Commando and Afghan National Army soldiers advancing in silence across the moonlit plain to the north of Kajaki Dam.

We are nearing our objective, and about to cross the last piece of open ground under cover of darkness, ready to take cover and assault our target compound in Taliban territory at first light.

Without warning, the loud thump of an explosion rolls across the plain, from somewhere close by to our left.

There are whispered discussions over what the explosion may have been. Possibly the sound of artillery miles away, one Marine suggests hopefully?

His radio earpiece chatters into life, and Dozza's worst fears are confirmed. A minestrike. There are at least two casualties, one of them in Category 1 - critical.

The Incident Response Team [IRT] casualty evacuation helicopter has already been requested from Camp Bastion, some 50 miles away.

As we wait for more information the more experienced Marines are already predicting the mission will have to be aborted, or ****-canned, as they put it.

The explosion means any hope of surprise is gone. Intelligence has already indicated that the Taliban heard the blast, the commander has alerted his troops, promised them reinforcements and talked of moving rockets forward to attack the IRT helicopter if it appears.

With Charlie Company's medics busy dealing with the casualties the Officer Commanding, Major Duncan Manning, will think twice before moving more troops forward towards a prepared enemy.

Sunrise is in one hour, and by the time the casualties are on the helicopter it will be daylight, making an advance across open ground highly risky.

Sure enough, 7 Troop is ordered to collapse its perimeter and move a few hundred yards west to help the recovery operation.

A Royal Marine Commando on patrol in the early hours as seen through night vision goggles.

By 5.45am the sky is growing paler over the mountains to the east. It will soon by light enough for the Taliban to fight, and 7 troop is still dangerously exposed.

Two Army Air Corps Apache helicopter gunships are circling overhead, and behind us we can hear the distinctive heavy thud of a Chinook helicopter's rotors, arriving to evacuate the two casualties.

The IRT helicopter is on constant stand-by at Camp Bastion and carries a surgeon, anaesthetist and nurses to start treating casualties in the air.

Intelligence indicates that the Taliban have advanced to our north west, and as the sun rises we advance north up a deep wadi towards the scene of the explosion.

Over the radio we are told that the patrol's Rules of Engagement, which set out when they can open fire, have been upgraded due to the higher imminent threat.

We reach the scene.

It seems an Afghan interpreter stepped on a buried mine while standing just beside the driver's seat of an open-topped Pinzgauer truck, used as the patrol's medical vehicle.

The ground had already been searched minutes earlier with metal detectors, but for some reason the mine was not spotted. It was placed with careful thought - just at the junction of the main wadi and a narrow tributary - an obvious point for a soldier to walk.

The interpreter suffered terrible injuries, losing both legs and suffering a heart attack. The medics got his heart going again, and struggled to stabilise his condition.

The Pinzgauer is damaged and cannot move. Blood is smeared along one side.

There is deep crater by the front wheel, just three feet from where the Royal Marine driver was sitting. Astonishingly his injuries were minor.

The doctor sitting in the back was thrown across the cabin, but is not seriously hurt.

To complicate matters there is now a serious risk of more mines, and the trailer behind the Pinzgauer is full of demolition explosives, ammunition and mortar bombs.

The Marines could 'deny' the Pinzgauer - or destroy it - using their own heavy weapons or calling in an airstrike from an Apache, but the ammunition would create a massive blast, and the vehicle appears to be repairable.

Royal Marine Matt Girling, one of 7 Troop's two specialist assault engineers, volunteers to go forward with a metal detector to clear a safe path. It is his first 'live' mine clearance task. Soon he is lying on his front probing the ground ahead with a narrow spike.

'That's one lonely job,' chuckles the CSM, standing with us on the lip of the wadi a few feet above he vehicle - far too close, when we think about it, to be watching a mine clearance operation next to a large stack of ammunition.

Marine Girling probes the ground with his commando knife, looking for more I.E.D's. 'No pressure, Royal,' he yells down at Marine Girling. His quip eases the tension a notch.

Suddenly the camp's faithful dog Tangye - a stray who has adopted the Marines and accompanies them on every patrol - trots forward cheerfully to see what all the fuss is about, sniffing the ground as he wanders into the minefield.

Before anyone can stop him he is just a few feet from Marine Matt Dirling.

The CSM has stopped smiling and is screaming at the Marine: 'Stand still, mate.'

The Sergeant Major and his colleagues try desperately to turn the dog back, whistling and gesticulating. One Marine half raises his rifle towards the dog.

Tangye seems puzzled, but after a few seconds turns around and trots back 50 yards towards the nearest Land Rover.

There is a collective sigh of relief. Matt Girling returns to his work.

Troops have fanned out to form a protective screen, with snipers and heavy machine guns on slight rises around the bomb site.

Tense minutes tick by. Finally Marine Dirling reaches the crippled vehicle, sweeps with his detector around the deep blast crater and the pile of blood-stained clothing which was cut from the interpreter as the medics fought to save his life.

Marine Girling reaches the stricken Pinzgauer and sweeps the crater left by the mine explosion. Clothing left by medics as they battled to save the injured interpreter is visible.

A Land Rover prepares to tow away the recovered Pinzgauer, and its trailer full of ammunition and explosives.

A Land Rover creeps forward through the narrow cleared path, and minutes later the Pinzgauer is towed to safety.

At 7.15am we extract back down the wadi.

Gunshots ring out behind. The sniper covering our withdrawal has seen figures moving on a nearby ridge and opened fire. The Taliban are not far behind.

An hour later we are safely back in camp.

Marine Matt Girling, 22, from Norwich describes his part in the drama.

'It was an anxious moment - the first time I've done it for real - but you choose your branch and take your chance.

'There are two assault engineers in our troop, and I volunteered to go forward, rather than leave it to the other guy.

'Mind you, they didn't tell me the trailer was full of ammo and explosives. Just as well, probably.'

Matt has been a Marine for five years, and specialised as an assault engineer 18 months ago. An expert in mines, he believes the device was probably an old Soviet anti-tank weapon, planted recently by the Taliban.

'We've passed that spot several times, and cleared the route. It was definitely freshly-laid.'

Marine Matt Girling who volunteered to sweep the area surrounding the mine-strike.

Safe and well- Tangye is patted by a Marine Commando, unaware of the danger she had caused.

News comes through from Camp Bastion.

The interpreter is dead.

His name was Mohammed. Officials will not tell us more because his family risks intimidation or worse from Taliban insurgents.

Three hundred Afghans work as interpreters for UK forces.

Mohammed was the fifth to die on the frontline. Dozens more have been injured.

Major Duncan Manning, the man in charge of the patrol, says: 'Everything was going well up until the explosion. We had complete surprise.

'We don't know why the mine wasn't spotted, but people are fallible and mistakes are made.

'This wasn't a good day from a Kajaki perspective, but unfortunately that's life out here.'

It is a sobering end to our time with the Marines at Kajaki. Hours later photographer Jamie Wiseman and I are on an American Chinook helicopter hugging the mountain valleys en route to Camp Bastion, and then home.

The Royal Marines we have left behind will be back on the ground within a few hours. For them the struggle and the danger go on.

An entire generation of Afghans have known nothing but war, and now their children are growing up amid conflict.

Their average life expectancy is 35 years.

The fight for peace in Afghanistan may well take that long.

An entire generation of Afghans have known nothing but war, and now their children are growing up amid conflict.

30 November 2007

Chief Engineer Sayed Rasul has run the Kajaki Dam
hydroelectric power station since the day it opened in 1975.

In 32 years he has served under the old Afghan Republic,
the Soviet Union's occupying forces, the
Mujahadeen, the Taliban and now the British military.

Despite a dearth of spare parts and intermittent pay, he and
his 40 staff have kept the electricity flowing as the years have rolled by and
the world has gone mad around them.

Today they live Taliban-held territory, and are forced to
pass through the frontlines each morning on their way to work. Both sides let
them through, because the dam and its electricity are the key to the hearts and
minds of hundreds of thousands of Afghans.

The dam itself, originally built as part of an ambitious
irrigation scheme in the 1950s, is a vast wall of compacted earth holding back
a lake spreading for miles through the mountains.

The Taliban have hit the structure with rockets during
recent fighting - probably by accident - and barely scratched it.

The generator hall is more vulnerable, with two vast turbine
shafts and a control room where the staff sleep, work and pray.

In a country full of squalor, mud-walled homes and dust,
this clean building full of gleaming hydraulics and well-maintained machinery
is from another world.

True, the engineers have had to become experts at
improvising repairs. One turbine relies on a heat exchanger ingeniously
fashioned from an old oil drum and a garden hose. But it all works.

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Kajaki Dam, which has produced electricity since 1975
despite repeated war. Insets: The shining 'new' technology of the 1970s.

Coalition plans are well-advanced to install a third
generator and upgrade the control systems using foreign aid.

The huge turbine and 300 tonnes of concrete to house it are
waiting in storage, and Chinese engineers are on stand-by to oversee the
project.

All that is needed now is an access road from here to Kandahar which does not
run through Taliban territory. That may take some years to achieve.

Next, we have been invited for lunch with Kajaki's District
Governor Mullah Abdul Raziq, a friendly former Mujahadeen fighter with twinkly
eyes and a silky black beard, who lives in a bungalow at the gates of the
British military camp.

For the time being he is Governor in all but name of a few
square miles of war zone from which all the locals have fled, except for a
single baker, one electrician and an elderly widow.

There are no reconstruction projects for him to run, and so
far his nominal duties consist of overseeing the local Afghan National Police
detachment.

Lunch consists of some fine bread, baked by one of the
Governor's three constituents. There is also a lambs liver stew, which we eat a
little gingerly.

Through our interpreter Governor Raziq apologises that this
is only a 'snack' and not a proper feast befitting the tradition of Pashtun
hospitality.

We press him for stories of his days fighting with the
Mujahadeen against the Soviet invaders in the 1980s.

He is a little coy, but talks thoughtfully about the reasons
the Russians were defeated here - a combination of Western funding and weaponry
supplied to the Mujahadeen and the Russians' failure to win the support of
local people, thinking wrongly that military victories would be enough.

The Governor believes the British are not making the same
mistake, and says he admires their 'hearts and minds' strategy. His script
could have been written in Whitehall.

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Daily Mail reporter Matthew Hickley dines with Kajaki's
District Commissioner Mullah Abdul Raziq (right), tucking into bread made by
one of his three remaining constituents.

Later we visit a building known locally as 'The Russians'
Last Stand'. The grim story attached to it may explain Mullah Abdul Raziq's
reluctance to discuss his exploits.

A massacre took place here, when a detachment of young
Soviet conscript soldiers were cut off and left behind during the retreat.

Surrounded by Mujahadeen fighters, they withstood wave after
wave of attacks, until their ammunition ran out.

The Mujahadeen stormed the ground floor and tortured and
butchered the soldiers they found there. The young Russians are said to have
been flayed alive.

Those upstairs fought on, listening to the screams of their
friends dying downstairs.

The walls of the dark stairwell are scarred with dozens of
bullet holes, from the last desperate minutes of fighting. None of the Russians
survived.

The atmosphere is oppressive. The shattered building has
never been re-used, and it lies just outside the British perimeter. We are glad
to leave.

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The Russian House, outside the British Kajaki Dam Base,
where young Russian conscripts made their last stand against the
Mujahadeen. None survived the onslaught.

We are heading for the Royal Marines' observation posts on
the peaks behind the camp, which offer a commanding view for miles, covering
all the ground on which fighting is taking place.

The route lies several hundred feet up a steep goat track,
and we arrive half an hour later panting for breath. The Marines race up
carrying full kit, the current record is 17 minutes.

Up here the Marines live for weeks at a time in crude dug
outs reminiscent of the First World War trenches, with precious few home
comforts. All their requirements have to be carried up, including water - and
the all important ammunition.

The first rains of winter arrived two days ago, and the
Marines are busy making their 'grots' or sleeping areas more waterproof.

Living in bunkers akin to First World War conditions, 22 year old Marine Tony Cross from Taunton re-reads a 'bluey' (a letter from home) in his 'grots'- sandbag living accommodation built on top of 'The Peaks', the Commando mountain outpost .
pictured looking towards the Northern 'FLET' or frontline.

Much of their time is spent manning powerful telescopes, and
firing .50 calibre heavy machine guns and javelin guided missiles in support of
their comrades on the ground.

In the distance they point out to us the target compounds we
are due to visit during a fighting patrol in the early hours of the next
morning.

We clamber back down the steep slopes to Kajaki camp. It is
more comfortable than most of the British military Forward Operating Bases in Helmand and helps protect
the Marine Commando Base below from Taliban advances.

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The Daily Mail's Matthew Hickley scales 'The Peaks', a mountain top Commando outpost which overlooks the Helmand River Valley and helps protect the Marine Commando Base below from Taliban advances. The Commando recod for ascent with full equipment is 17 minutes.

Built for the dam construction workers half a century ago,
it boasts neat bungalows, electrical power, limited running water and an
eye-wateringly beautiful view, most of which is of land held by the Taliban.

Two local dogs have been adopted by forces, one named Tangye and the other Charlie, named after Charlie Company 40

The dogs accompany the Marines on all their patrols, even at
night, and often pop in to visit the detachment living on the distant peaks.

They eat extremely well, with many of the Marines grumbling
that their mothers, wives and girlfriends send more parcels containing luxury
dog food than anything else.

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Royal Marine Commandos on patrol with the help of Charlie
(front) and Tangye (background)', the camp dogs, who have started receiving
more luxurious welfare parcels than some of the troops.

Arriving back at the camp we face a serious problem. We
failed to bring with us any mugs for drinking tea - or 'a wet', as the Marines
call it - and the base has run out of the usual disposable cups.

The ever-helpful Nepalese soldiers from the Queen's Gurkha
Engineers come to our rescue, lending us a saw and showing us how to carve the
bottom of a hardened plastic case for an 81mm mortar shell into a serviceable
mug, about the size of a pint glass.

Panic over. Time to put the kettle on - and prepare for the
next night patrol.

29 November 2007

Through the abandoned, silent town where weeds grow in the street and doors hang off their hinges, there is no talking.

The patrol trudges on in double file, spaced on either side of the road, out onto the deserted plain that is no-man's land.

It is 2.30am, and the moonlight is so bright there is no need for night vision goggles.

We can see dozens of men stretching in front and behind, and the high peaks across the Helmand River from where more Marines in the observation posts are watching.

The men of Charlie Company, 40 Commando are heading out on a recce patrol across the plains below the Kajaki dam, in northern Helmand, which is their task to protect.

They are moving towards the Taliban's frontline some three miles away - looking for weaknesses, 'break-in' points and evacuation routes, learning the ground for future battles and, if necessary, fighting one tonight.

This no-man's land is an undulating plain of rock and sand, with occasional ridges, dried up wadis [water courses] and dotted with abandoned farm compounds.

The Taliban rarely fight at night, and our aim is to recce our targets and slip away by first light, unless the Taliban spot us and attack.

After an hour we pause and 'go firm', taking cover against a compound wall. A few whispered conversations. Muted chatter from radio headphones.The temperature is dropping.

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Troops from 'C' Company, 40 Commando "go firm", using the mud walls of a compound to take cover from possible enemy fire, pictured in the early hours en route to Taliban held territory. The photograph was taken by moonlight on a long exposure.

The Fire Support Group - heavy weapons teams in Land Rovers - have already crept forward onto high ground, scanning their 'arcs' with night vision sights.

We move on again, gaining height, with frequent stops to scan with metal detectors, searching for booby-trap bombs.

We stop at a small isolated mud-walled hut. 7 Troop's Sergeant Dominic 'Dozza' Conway goes to see if he can safely enjoy a swift cigarette inside.

Instead he stumbles across the entrance to a tunnel system, with rough steps disappearing 20 feet down into the ground.

The whole area is crisscrossed with tunnels, trenches and rat runs, enabling the Taliban to pop up unexpectedly and launch flanking attacks.

Dozza notes the location with his hand-held GPS, but there is no time to explore fully.

It is now 4am, and we are 400 yards short of the Taliban frontline, with some two hours of darkness left.

Ahead of us occasional flashes light up the sky. Distant airstrikes? Artillery? We lie on a low ridge, scanning the ground in front. Soon we realise it is an electrical storm.

This complicates matters. If it reaches our position the patrol's radio aerials could put them in danger of a lighting strike.

We move on and shortly before 5am we creep up the slope to our target compound, which is silhouetted against the night sky. This is the furthest the Marines have advanced to date, and we are in Taliban territory.

Slipping through a rubble-filled gap caused by an airstrike, and the Marines quickly fan out to clear the compound, then through the warren of mud walls into the next abandoned enclosure.

Only later do we learn that at this point we were in the next-door compound to the forward Taliban sentry, with only a mud wall dividing us.

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Troops inside an abandoned compound in no-man's land.

Our troop commander Captain Russell Fleet is muttering into his radio headset, giving our position and asking permission to move forward once more.

We are told to wait. Troops to the rear are preparing the Desert Hawk, a small satellite-guided spy drone launched using a large elastic bungee which flies a few hundred feet up, watching the battlefield below.

The radio crackles. The UAV launch has encountered a problem on take-off - when it hit the operator on the head and crashed. The satellite-link has failed.

Without UAV cover and with the electrical storm closing in, Company Commander Major Duncan Manning has decided not to risk a further advance, and our troop is ordered to extract - little knowing how close we are to confronting a Taliban sentry post.

Dozza observes: 'The lads are just itching to get at the enemy, but we have to look at the bigger picture.

'We will come back here and get them, but for now we've achieved the mission. We've recced routes in and out of here.

'The OC [officer commanding] doesn't want us in the open at first light.'

The wind is rising as we descend the slope, kicking up the dust and bringing a biting cold. The first spots of rain of winter are falling.

Five minutes later, the storm is screaming. The dust has all-but blotted out the moonlight and visibility is dropping fast. The sky is growing paler, but the Taliban will struggle to see us now.

We trudge on through the cold half-light and rejoin the Fire Support Group, then seek shelter from he rain in another cluster of abandoned compounds.

Our next task is to provide protection for the local Afghan National Police who are passing this way en route to buy provisions. They are procrastinating over the radio as to what time they will be meeting their supplier. 9am? 10? 11?

Maj Manning is not prepared to leave his troops doing nothing so close to the enemy for four hours just because the ANP cannot decide what time to go shopping. He orders a withdrawal.

We start the long trudge back to camp. Intelligence indicates that Taliban are now aware of our presence and are planning an out-flanking attack, believing the clouds will keep aircraft away.

As we withdraw an American F-15 strike jet arrives to make a show of strength, dropping out of the clouds to scream over the Taliban behind us, firing off flares.

By 9am we are back in camp. The local Police, emboldened by the coalition warplanes roaring overhead, have now decided to go shopping without the Marines' protection.

It is a bad decision.

The Taliban have had plenty of time to watch the Marines' withdrawal, and have followed at a distance.

Within minutes the still morning is shattered by small arms fire. 'There go the ANP shooting off. It'll be a load of fuss about nothing,' commentsCompany Sergeant Major Dave Layton.

The firing grows more intense. The thudding explosion from a rocket propelled grenade echoes around the hills.

'Hmmm. Maybe not, then,' says the CSM, listening thoughtfully.

Another RPG explodes, and another. More machine gun fire follows. The police patrol's shopping trip has turned into a pitched battle, just at the spot where the Marines Fire Support Group vehicles were parked earlier.

The same FSG teams are now running to their vehicles and hurrying out of the camp to the rescue.

Back in camp, 40 Commando's Mortar Troop are dashing though the rain to their posts and their controller, 38-year-old Sgt Simon 'Smudge' Smith, from Plymouth, is yelling orders.

The mortar line routine is slick. Within seconds each team has the right ammunition stacked ready for use and are aiming their mortar tubes.

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A shell visible through the 'dragons breath'- flames at the end of a mortar tube- as Mortar Troops attached 'C' Company, 40 Commando fire smoke shells to help the ANP escape Taliban fire after their shopping trip turned nasty.

Smudge yells out bearing, elevations and charge strengths from a small hand-held computer which processes target coordinates.

On his command, shells are dropped neatly into the barrels and the thumping explosions rock the mortar positions. Above us the projectiles can just be glimpsed in a blur - disappearing into the clouds.

The seconds tick by as the shells fly thousands of feet into air, and the teams wait for target corrections over the radio net.

Mortar firing continues for 10 minutes, putting down a smoke barrage for the ANP and Marines to withdraw to safety.

From the battlefield the firing subsides. And Smudge orders the teams to 'check firing.'

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An RAF Harrier swoops low over the Tangye Bridge, in a show of force in support of 40 Commando troops facing Taliban forces.

An RAF Harrier jump jet arrives to add a further show of force, roaring 100ft above the river in front of the camp.

The Taliban have had enough.
News comes through that the ANP have all reached the camp without casualties.

They were lucky this time. Whether they will get up earlier to go shopping next time is another matter.

28 November 2007

To fix a small hole in the road at Kajaki, Afghanistan, requires several scores of heavily-armed Royal Marines and Gurkhas including snipers, combat engineers, medics and mortar teams.

The hole in question happens to be in no-man's land, just a few hundred yards short of the nearest Taliban firing position.

The Marines of Charlie Company, 40 Commando, have a luxury which is unusual for British forces in Afghanistan. They know where the enemy is.

Tasked with protecting the strategically-vital Kajaki dam, which provides electricity and irrigation water for most of Helmand Province, the Marines control - in a loose sense - a bubble of territory extending some two to three miles around the dam itself.

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On patrol: Royal Marine Commandos south of their base at Kajaki Dam in Helmand Province, Southern Afghanistan.

From their compound The Marines can clearly see the 'FLET' - Forward Line of Enemy Troops - marked by a line of sun-baked compounds in the middle distance, held by Taliban fighters.

Virtually all the local civilians have fled, so that instead of patrolling through busy towns and villages where every local is a potential Taliban gunman, Charlie Company are able to fight a more conventional battle.

It is the only place in Afghanistan where the term 'FLET' is used.

The two sides in the fight for Kajaki have reached a strange deadlock.

The Royal Marines lack the manpower or firepower to push the Taliban further back, and are content for now to safeguard the dam itself, launching frequent fighting patrols to stop enemy encroachment.

For their part the Taliban lack the strength to storm the British positions - which are backed by a ridge of high hills from where the Marines have a commanding view of the entire area - and seem satisfied with containing the UK forces, lobbing occasional mortar shells and rockets at the British base, and fighting viciously when the Marines approach.

Nor do the insurgents want to destroy the huge Kajaki Dam or disrupt its electricity supply, which would enrage the ordinary Afghans whose support the Taliban need.

Bizarrely the militants even allow the local power station workers to pass unhindered through their own frontline each morning on their way to work at the dam, carrying a special pass, and to return each night to their homes in Taliban-held territory.

It is a unique situation, as the Taliban are notorious for intimidating or killing locals who cooperate with coalition forces.

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The Marines protect Kajaki dam, which provides electricity and irrigation water for most of Helmand Province

We joined the men of Charlie Company on a morning patrol into the southern 'FLET' area, tasked with protecting the Gurkha Engineers as they repair a stretch of road, then sweeping through a previously-unvisited area of mud-walled compounds.

"The (heavy weapons teams) on our vehicles or the snipers can see them better, and talk us onto the targets, but it's often just a window or a hole in a compound wall the Taliban are firing from.

"They tend not to attack unless we approach within a certain distance. So it either all goes kinetic [a firefight] or we have a kind of Mexican stand-off."

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The Marines mix with local farmers

Our patrol moves into no-man's land - an area of fields, irrigation ditches and compounds flanking the Helmand River.

We meet a handful of local farmers who have fled their homes because of the fighting, but are so desperate to scratch a living that they occasionally return to their fields to hurriedly tend their crops, sometimes by torch-light at night, watched suspiciously by both the Taliban and the Royal Marines.

Through the interpreters the farmers ask the British troops, should we leave the area? Are you going to fight? Will you warn us?

A Marine tells them they are welcome to stay.

We will not fight today unless the Taliban open fire but we cannot guarantee the farmers' safety.

The nervous farmers eventually decide their crops are not worth the risk today, and they make to leave.

These Afghans live their lives quite literally in the cross-fire.

The Marines are encouraged that they are here at all, as the locals appear to feel at least a little safer than in previous months.

"We have to try to make them feel safe enough to farm," Dozza observes.

"It's no good us just killing the bad guys. These locals have got to farm or they'll starve to death. There's no Tesco on the corner, like."

For the British troops the main danger here is from hidden booby-trap bombs.

The Taliban creep out and bury crude pressure-plate devices connected to old artillery shells or other explosives. They are deadly when they work, and finding them requires patience and skill with metal detectors.

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Searches of the farm land is carried out in order to find hidden booby-trap bombs

The Marines move on as the heat grows more intense, systematically clearing and searching a warren of abandoned farmers' compounds, moving steadily closer to the Taliban lines.

A few more farmers appear, along with a handful of children - smiling and curious as always.

Each section of troops carries a lightweight assault ladder to gain access to roofs, and stretchers in case of casualties.

26 November 2007

Thursday is Shura day at the British military base in Sangin, northern Helmand Province.It is not to be confused with compensation claim day, which is Tuesday. But more of that later.

In Afghanistan a Shura is a traditional gathering of elders to discuss weighty matters.

Every Thursday Governor Hazitullah, the man appointed to represent President Karzai's government here in Sangin, invites the local elders into his official residence - a building refurbished by the British, within the walls of their fortified compound on the edge of town.

If he lived outside the walls, he would be lucky to survive long with the Taliban still lurking in Sangin.

For Major Dan Cheesman, officer commanding Bravo Company 40 Commando, Royal Marines, the weekly Shura is a chance to urge support from the locals, to offer a vision for Sangin's future and to drop a few hints to keep the Taliban guessing about his next move.

At 10am some two dozen elders file into the whitewashed and pillared meeting room, remove their shoes and take their places seated on the rugs covering the floor.

At one end Maj Cheesman is joined by the Governor, the local police chief, the Afghan National Army (ANA) colonel commanding Sangin's 'kandak', or battalion - an imposing bearded soldier from the north of Afghanistan - and the ever-present interpreters.

First come the speeches. The Governor, a rotund and cheerful former Mujahadeen commander who fought against the Russians, is master of ceremonies, and tells the elders when to clap.

He speaks first, expounding the merits of education (he himself is illiterate) and urging them to send their children to the new primary school nearing completion just outside the compound gates, where British heavy machine guns can protect it.

The police chief speaks out against fraudulent compensation claims from the British. Pausing to silence his mobile phone's elaborate ring-tone, he claims such frauds are 'un-Islamic', even when perpetrated against British infidels.

The Afghan colonel calls for the elders' support. The British are only here to create security and to help, he says. The roads and buildings they are creating cannot be taken back to Britain - they are purely for the people of Sangin.

The Taliban have nothing to offer but violence, he says. They wage jihad against their fellow-Muslims in the town.

It is a persuasive message, but his audience is cautious.

In this war-torn region local Afghans have always survived the endless conflicts by backing the likely winners, and for now things remain in the balance.

The elders clap politely but their faces are inscrutable.

A handful of the 'elders' here today are almost certainly Talib fighters, memorising faces and gathering intelligence. The risk is judged to be worth taking. Everyone is searched at the compound gates.

There is one moment of fear, however.

An Afghan police officer is distributing glasses of sweet tea, his AK-47 rifle slung backwards from his shoulder - the barrel waving around the room.

A British Army officer surreptitiously reaches up and flicks the assault rifle's safety catch to 'on'. He catches my eye and grimaces.

It is not uncommon for Afghan police to have negligent discharges, shooting themselves in the foot, or worse.

Maj Cheesman rises to speak. It has been another busy week, he says, and the Taliban are still too scared to fight the British.

'It is our number one priority to hunt these people down', he says. 'We have hundreds of Marines and many, many tanks. We will kill them if they come.'

It is a simple message. We have a big stick and will hit the Taliban.

The carrot next - promises of improvements in the so-far unimpressive local police force. A radio station for the Governor on which the elders can speak to local people, if they like.

He saves his best carrot for last - the British have £1million, a vast sum of money in local terms, to spend on reconstruction projects in the next three months. Local workers will be hired to build amenities, with good wages for good quality work.

'If you do not involve yourselves in these projects the money will not come to your part of Sangin, and it will go back to Britain.'

The speeches are over, and it is the turn of the elders.

Suddenly all the talk of community reconstruction and a bright future is brought face to face with reality.

Every single elder crowds around the nearest British officer demanding to know what is happening with his own individual compensation claim - for houses or vehicles damaged in recent fighting, or for relatives killed.

No, the British officers insist patiently. Tuesday is compensation day. Today is Thursday - the day for talking about reconstruction.

Nobody hears. The tide of self-interest and greed flows through the room, sweeping all before it.

Captain Charlie Macdonald is the officer tasked with spreading the coalition message to the people of Sangin.

'It is very difficult,' he says. 'It is almost as if we have to teach these people what to aspire to. They've known nothing but war for 30 years, and simply don't have any vision of working schools or clinics or rubbish collection.

'It's a gap in their vocabulary. All they care about right now is me, me, me.

'Of course it's understandable. It will take years of small steps.'

None of the elders have any suggestions for reconstruction projects. They wave documentary 'evidence' supporting their claims, some of which are ludicrous. One man insists he had nine vehicles destroyed by British bombs. Nobody in Sangin has nine vehicles.

Tempers flare. British officers have to become increasingly firm.

Finally everybody has had their say, and the elders drift away for the lunch laid on for them.We retire with the senior Afghan and British players to the Governor's dining room - a smaller room with a fine carpet and cushions against the walls, where plates of raisins and cans of Orangina await us.

A goat arrived outside a few minutes earlier, bleating unhappily in the clutches of a motorbike passenger. Lunch may be a while yet.

The talk is of politics - local, national and international.

The ANA Colonel speaks out angrily against Pakistan, whose interference and unofficial support for the Taliban he blames for most of Afghanistan's ills.

Maj Cheesman, an officer with long experience of Afghan politics, gently probes the Governor, testing his willingness to confront the hundred-and-one intractable problems in his town.

Today there is progress. When I ask Governor Hazitullah about his work he is eager to take credit for everything good which is happening. 'I have built the new police accommodation. I am building the primary school.'

The British officers, eager to put an 'Afghan face' on all their work here, are encouraged to hear him finally taking 'ownership' of these projects.

If UK forces are ever to leave Sangin, the Governor and all his officials will have to stand alone.

For now that remains a distant prospect.

Lunch arrives and a plastic sheet is spread out, covered with briefcase-sized slabs of naan bread, plates of rice, fish (mostly inedible) and a meat curry.

The British are careful to observe the niceties. We sit cross-legged to avoid showing the soles of our feet to our hosts. All food is eaten right-handed.

Finally the meeting draws to a close, with many handshakes and smiles. The Governor embraces me and calls me 'brother' - a very great compliment.

In the struggle to build a stable, secure society here, both the British and Afghans are still in the foothills.

23 November 2007

British soldiers under attack in southern Afghanistan fire mortar shells to repel a Taliban night assault.

The deafening explosions light up the night, and illumination flares float down from the sky to help troops manning the heavy machine guns on the rooftops to break up the attack, killing or driving away the insurgents.

Close up: An intense pounding sound from the mortars can be heard all night at the camp

UK forces in Sangin, northern Helmand Province, are working to dominate the area and win over the hearts and minds of locals, but the Taliban insurgents have not retreated.

Fortified camps around the town are under frequent attack, as the enemy try to drive out the British and Afghan National Army forces and to show the locals that the Taliban remains a force to be reckoned with.

In this incident on Thursday night the militants crept up on the British compound and fired rocket-propelled grenades, then opened up with machine guns.

Men from Mortar Platoon, the 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards, scrambled into action as orders came through on the radio, relaying target coordinates for the enemy positions.

Here Guardsman Matthew Parkin, 19, and Guardsman Martyn Jones, 20, normally based in Windsor, are seen firing shells from their 81mm heavy mortar.

Sangin was the scene of intense fighting last summer and earlier this year, as UK forces withstood weeks of assaults from Taliban fighters trying to overrun this base.

The town has traditionally been a major centre for the flourishing opium trade, was a Taliban stronghold until UK forces arrived last year.

Now two other bases a few miles outside the town are acting as a buffer for Sangin itself by absorbing most of the daily attacks, and the enemy seldom assaults the town itself in daylight, preferring to plant roadside bombs or to pound the military compounds with heavy weapons at night.

A few locals have moved back into the town - largely abandoned during the recent fighting - and security is just about sufficient for the first efforts at reconstruction to begin.

But as these images show, the battle for Sangin - where Royal Marines from Bravo Company, 40 Commando are trying to bring stability - is far from over, with the Taliban biding their time and striking whenever they can.

22 November 2007

The sun was not yet up as the rumbling armoured column surrounded the town, and the Royal Marines leapt from their vehicles and took up positions ready for their assault.

The remote desert settlement of Malmand, untouched so far by the Afghan conflict, was about to receive its first visit from coalition forces fighting the Taliban in Helmand Province.

Three hundred and fifty men had travelled through the night across the desert, and within minutes the high ground around the town - identified as a haven and supply post for senior Taliban commanders - was bristling with allied heavy machine-guns and mortar teams.

With so much firepower supporting them, most of the Marines were hopeful that things would 'kick off.'

After weeks of detailed planning, a combined force of Royal Marines, American Special Forces and Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers were here to capture or kill the Taliban leaders and demonstrate their ability to dominate this area.

As Operation Ghartse Amazon began we joined the Marines of 4 Troop, Bravo Company 40 Commando, as they took up defensive positions on the edge of the settlement and then advanced swiftly to their first target.

Malmand town, a Biblical scene of mud-walled compounds and small fields, had been photographed from the air and painstakingly mapped with scores of compounds given separate codenames each assigned to a particular unit to minimise the risk of friendly fire in a complex, multinational operation.

Ahead, we could already see figures fleeing from compounds, jumping down from the high walls and vanishing into the twilight. Reaching our first target compound, the troops took up all-round defensive positions and swept into a squalid, filthy courtyard, the Afghan soldiersentering first.

A group of women and young children cowered in a corner, the women hidingtheir faces from the strangers.

The owner gave his name as Mohammed. No, there were no Taliban here, hesaid. Yes, they sometimes came to the village.

Every room was searched, every pile or rubbish and straw kicked over. Butno weapons were found.

At the next compound the Marines uncovered a shotgun with cartridges, butaccepted the owner's story that they were for self-defence. He claimed tobe a teacher and insisted he hated the Taliban - who for years haveintimidated and murdered schoolteachers.

Bizarrely, the Gurkha Commando engineers attached to our patrol, experts in'explosive entry' or blowing holes in the mud-brick walls, are able to chat to the locals in Hindi. Many Afghans have apparently learned the Indian language from watching Bollywood movies.

The priority targets dealt with, the Marines withdrew to a small hill while ANA soldiers conducted their own search nearby, accompanied by British Army mentors.

UK troops remain nervous of the ANA's questionable weapons-handling skills, and their eagerness to loose off a few rounds.

The Marines shook their heads and muttered as repeated warning shots rang out from the compounds where the Afghan soldiers are searching.

At this point intelligence sources suggested the Taliban claimed that they could see us on the hill and were about to open fire with rocket-propelled grenades.

A big ambush was prepared in the centre of town, and they would kill us all.

On the face of it this seemed alarming news, but the Marines were unimpressed.

"They're always boasting that we're surrounded and they're about to attack. Maybe it's to impress their bosses, or see how we react.

"It would be suicidal to take us on here. We've got the town surrounded with heavy weapons, and hundreds of men on the ground.

"I doubt any of them would get away, and we wouldn't be particularly merciful. They know we probably won't open fire unless we see them with weapons, so they cache their weapons and hide.

"They also don't want to be blamed for civilian casualties. They need hearts and minds as much as we do."

We moved on through more compounds, every one containing a large stack of dried poppies, left over from the recent harvest.

The fields have already been sown with the next crop.

Opium production is growing fast in Helmand - probably the world's most productive area, accounting for most of the heroin which reaches Britain'sstreets.

Eradicating the poppies is outside the remit of British forces, and the Afghan government is doing nothing in this area. Farmers make five times more profit from opium than from wheat, and no realistic alternative is on offer.

Among all the talk of reconstruction, heroin is the 'elephant in the room', as one British officer put it.

All the land in Malmand is thought to be owned by one 'narco-chief', who rents the land out to farmers to grow his poppies for him.

The searches dragged on as the day grew hotter. A few weapons were found and confiscated, more farmers questioned. More piles of poppies found and ignored.

But no ambush came, no RPG attacks.

A French Mirage jet roared low over the town - a sudden crack of thunder above the rooftops. Two slower American A-10 jets followed, firing off flares as they climbed into the distance. The Taliban have learned to respect and fear allied airpower.

Finally after almost seven hours on the ground we reached our pick-up point and the weary Marines clambered gratefully into Viking armoured vehicles for the long, cramped and uncomfortable four-hour journey back to base.

Reaching Sangin, the danger was not over.

The Taliban knew that the British forces must return along a particular route - now an obvious route for an IED attack.

The tired troops disembarked and formed up into tactical patrols, flankingand surrounding the danger spot in depth. Any waiting attacker now facedalmost certain capture or death, and no attack comes.

For the fighting Marines this was a day of frustration and anti-climax - an increasingly common pattern, at least in this area, where the Taliban appear increasingly unwilling to attack in open battle.

But Major Dan Cheesman, officer commanding Bravo Company 40 Commando and the man in charge of today's operation, was not discouraged.

"The Taliban were there," he said, speaking back at base in Sangin, 20 miles away.

"We now believe they were hiding in a mosque with 30 fighters, and we didn't search the mosque.

"Even if they'd had 100 fighters they'd have been mad to take us on. We appeared at dawn and encircled them with armour in what amounted to a battle group operation.

"We swept through the town. We were seen to be respectful and polite. We didn't outstay our welcome.

"Am I disappointed the Taliban didn't fight? No. This is a counter-insurgency campaign. A long game.

"They know we can come back whenever we want. Malmand is no longer safe forthem."

The Sangin District Centre, as the fortified compound is called, is based around the former home of a
wealthy drugs baron, now thought to have fled to Musa Qala.

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The boys of Bravo Company, 40 Commando, relax in thier headquarters in Sangin Camp, which was the former home of a wealthy drugs baron

The three-storey building which acts as HQ to Bravo Company, 40 Commando, features elaborately decorated ceilings with tiled and mirrored mosaics - clearly funded by highly profitable opium crops, in a town where most people live in mud-walled compounds.

There is even a swimming pool, currently drained and being lived in by the explosives disposal team.
There are plans to fill it with water - probably once they have moved out.

From time to time a man claiming to be the owner's brother arrives and demands rent from the British,
but the District Governor has declared the house to be Afghan Government property, on loan to UK forces, and the man is given short thrift.

Most of the Marines make themselves as comfortable as they can in single-storey mud huts, sleeping on
camp beds surrounded by stacks of weapons, ammunition, radios, night vision goggles and batteries, body armour and water bottles.

Everything is permanently covered in fine dust.

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Dinner is served: The Marines are served two hot meals a day. Breakfast (pictured), like the rest of the food is wholesome but monotonous

The diet is wholesome but monotonous, with breakfast and dinner cooked in a tented galley and eaten from disposable plates, cups and cutlery.

Breakfast consists of porridge, scrambled egg and a concoction of baked beans and sausages.

Lunchtime brings a limited choice of rehydrated packet noodles, rice and pasta, with slabs of chocolate
and dried fruit.

The chefs' repertoire at dinner is limited to stew and mashed potato, spaghetti Bolognese, curry or
chilli and rice, followed by tinned fruit and custard. Food may not be varied, but nor is it in short supply.

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The troops guard Sangin base against attack from the Taliban 24 hours a day

The toilets, or 'heads', are pipes draining into an irrigation canal, or 'long drop' seats.

Solar showers are used - bags of water left to warm in the sun during the day and then hung on a peg.
Others prefer to swim and wash in the canal which runs through the camp.

The rule is that helmets and body armour are never more than a few seconds away.

Generators provide electricity most of the time, powering a television and two laptops for the Marines to email friends and family back home.

Up on the roof of the two tall buildings within the compound fortified 'sangars' are manned around the clock watching every approach to the camp.

At times they have been kept busy repelling attacks by the Taliban. Recent days have been quieter, but there is no let-up in watchfulness.

The medical post in the HQ building is frequently used to treat badly injured locals. Some arrive with
stab or gunshot wounds from family disputes which get out of hand.

We watched a three-year-old Afghan boy being treated for severe burns, suffered when scalding milk was spilled over his back.

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Medics treat a three-year-old Afghan boy who was badly burnt by scalding milk

The medics' remit is to treat trauma cases among locals whenever possible as part of the 'hearts and
minds' effort, but not long-term conditions where the patient would become dependent on military help.

Among the Royal Marines the mood is upbeat. They are in the second month of a six-month tour of duty, and so far they feel they have been successful in taking the fight to the enemy, patrolling with enough men and firepower to discourage the Taliban from taking them on.

Direct attacks on the Sangin camp have tailed off, as new British operating bases to the north and the south are bearing the brunt of the Taliban's frequent assaults, shielding Sangin town itself and allowing just enough security for reconstruction efforts to begin - albeit in a small way so far.

The Taliban are still here in Sangin, and the loyalty of locals is in the balance, but commanders are optimistic.

The Marines look forward to their next scrap with the enemy, and 'getting some rounds down.'

18 November 2007

The helicopter hugs the contours of the mountain valley, twisting and climbing steeply between the towering cliffs.

Inside the noise is deafening - the thud of the twin rotors competing with the screaming of the engines, while the wind rips through the crowded rear cabin, coating everything with dust and the hot smell of aviation fuel.

A dozen Royal Marines are strapped in on the cramped bench seats, with piles of rucksacks and supplies filling every available inch of space.

The RAF's fleet of Chinook helicopters is working around the clock ferrying men and supplies to the outlying fighting bases up and down the Helmand River valley, which means landing in the most hazardous areas of the Province.

First stop this morning is Kajaki Dam - the northernmost outpost of Britain's military effort - upon which hangs the coalition's hopes for the long-term development of Helmand, and of some form of victory here in the years ahead.

The Dam provides electricity and irrigation water for tens of thousands of Afghans downstream, where UK forces are locked in a battle to win their hearts and minds.

The ambitious plan is to install more turbines in the dam to boost capacity, and with it the region's economy - a vital step in persuading the locals that life without the Taliban offers a brighter future.

But before that, the area must somehow be made safe. For now the long road to Kajaki, up which engineers and huge pieces of machinery will one day have to pass, runs through a warzone.

And at the dam itself the ground held by Marines of Charlie Company, 40 Commando British only extends two or three miles to the north or south. Beyond that the Taliban lie in wait, occasionally firing mortar shells towards the dam and the turbine hall.

Each time British troops mount fighting patrols to push the enemy back, they spark a battle, and each time they return to their base, the Taliban creep forward.

Daily Mail journalist Matthew Hickley arrives at Sangin Camp in a Chinook helicopter, in the Helmand Province of Southern Afghanistan, to start patrols with British Soldiers

The Marines control the high ground and have superior firepower, but for the time being neither side has the strength to drive the other off, and for the British this is a holding action - keeping the Taliban at bay just sufficiently to keep the dam out of accurate mortar range.

Our Chinook races through a rocky valley system in Taliban-held territory and drops towards the lake, skimming across the dazzling blue water to touch down on a dusty track in the narrow gorge just below the dam, kicking up a dust-storm which engulfs the party of Marines waiting for the Chinook's arrival.

We are on the ground for only a few seconds. The Marines hurry aboard to grab the boxes of supplies and two treasured bags of post and parcels from home.

Then we are airborne and climbing fast, spiralling away out of small-arms fire range.

Our destination today is the town of Sangin, 25 miles downstream from Kajaki.

A Gurkha at Sangin Camp goes fishing in a nearby canal

Last summer soldiers from the Parachute Regiment spent weeks under siege in this small fortified compound on the edge of town, beating back wave after wave of attacks as the Taliban tried to overrun the camp, using the maze of mud-walled homes outside the gate and the so-called Green Zone of vegetation along the river as cover.

The Sangin fortress - centred around the impressive former mansion of an Afghan drugs baron - is scarred and battered by countless bullets and rocket-grenades, but remains firmly in British hands.

Today it is home to Bravo Company of 40 Commando. They still face firefights and roadside bombs in the town on their doorstep, although much of the fighting has shifted four kilometres to the north where troops have established a new Forward Operating Base.

The Marines there, from Alpha Company, are under daily attack with machine guns, mortars and rockets. It is progress of a kind, as the Taliban have been pushed back a little, and in Sangin there are the first signs of normality returning - or what passes for normality in Helmand Province.

Locals have started to move back into the abandoned town.

As we arrive, news comes over the radio of another 'TIC' or Troops In Contact - a firefight - nearby at the new base. We watch from the rooftop hangar as an allied jet is called in to launch an airstrike on a Taliban firing position, and a 500lb bomb sends a mushroom cloud of dust and smoke hundreds of feet into the sky.

More warplanes circle high above, and a British Harrier jump jet screams low over Sangin, heading towards the battle nearby.

By sunset the fighting on the horizon has tailed off. At Sangin the Marines are resting, preparing for their next patrol. After the heat of the day they bathe and wash in the fast-flowing irrigation canal which bisects the compound.

Home comforts: Between patrols the Marines take time out to bathe and wash their laundry in the irrigation canal which bisects the Sangin compound.

Seasoned experts at improvising home comforts, some have rigged up on old stove in their makeshift accommodation to bake fresh bread.

The Queen's Gurkha Engineers detachment prefer fishing in the canal carrying their famous Kukri knives to prepare their catch for the cooking pot.

Up in the rooftop watchtowers, in the gathering darkness, Marines scour the approaches to the camp with night-vision equipment, and the heavy weapon positions and piles of ammunition stand ready.

There is time for the Padre of 40 Commando, who arrived on the same helicopter flight, to hold a short prayer meeting. A few Marines gather in a quiet corner and the Padre hands around copies of the 'Commando Prayer Book', which they read by the light of their head torches. The cover shows a Cross above the black Commando dagger - the badge which every Marine wears proudly on his arm.

The night is punctuated by occasional small-arms fire and flares sent up from the watchtowers, illuminating possible hostile contacts.

Tomorrow brings more patrols out into the town - more risks of attack from the Taliban, more efforts to rebuild and to gain the trust of the ordinary Afghans who live out their lives against the backdrop of this war.